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5 questions with … Bath-Tsugaru’s new president

BY DANEEM KIM

Times Record Staff

ANNE SCHLITT was elected president of the board of directors for the Bath- Tsugaru Sister City Exchange Program.
DAN DIPPOLITO /CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BATH

The Bath-Tsugaru Sister City Exchange Program recently appointed Anne Schlitt as the new president of its board of directors. She will be replacing Andy Bailes, who served as president last year and succeeded Deborah Patten’s 15 years of leadership.

Schlitt, a Michigan native who now lives in Phippsburg, is no stranger to Japanese culture. She taught English to high school students in Ako, Japan for three years through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program after graduating from college.

After she moved to Maine and discovered Bath’s connection to Tsugaru, Japan, Schlitt joined the board in 2014, calling it “an amazing coincidence.”

“I realized how … deep the relationships are between Japan and Maine,” she said. “It’s all over the state, and it made me love Maine even more.”

The annual exchange program takes place every summer, as students and adults from the local community travel to Tsugaru, Japan and travelers from the sister city are also hosted in Midcoast Maine.

Schlitt, who has been busy with her new role and preparations with the organization’s upcoming Japan Culture

After she moved to Maine and discovered Bath’s connection to Tsugaru, Japan, Schlitt joined the board in 2014, calling it “an amazing coincidence.”

“I realized how … deep the relationships are between Japan and Maine,” she said. “It’s all over the state, and it made me love Maine even more.”

The annual exchange program takes place every summer, as students and adults from the local community travel to Tsugaru, Japan and travelers from the sister city are also hosted in Midcoast Maine.

Schlitt, who has been busy with her new role and preparations with the organization’s upcoming Japan Culture

Day event on March 12, shared her vision for the program.

The Times Record: How do you feel about your new leadership role?

Anne Schlitt: I’m excited about it. I know Deb Patten led this organization for a long time with a lot of energy, passion and commitment, and made it what it is. I hope that I can keep that going and create the same kind of deep relationships that she did around the community and in the region.

TR: What are some of your plans for the organization this upcoming year?

AS: One thing we’re hoping to get going this summer is a sushi cook-off. So the idea would be to create some different categories, like traditional rolls, maki and sashimi and unusual out of the box (rolls) … and see what people come up with. We’re in the very early stages of talking about this, but we’re hopeful we can pull it off for the summer and have the visitors act as judges.

So we’ll put out a call to all of the region’s Japanese restaurants to enter, as well as amateur cooks, and we’ll include a workshop on how to do it. And to attend you’ll have to buy a ticket, and then we would put money toward scholarships for future years.

TR: What are some of the challenges you expect to face?

AS: One of our big struggles is finding host families, and so we’re really going to focus on how can we expand that base of host families and really create a sense of community among the people who are involved in this program from year to year. If you’re a host family and you have a good experience, we really want people to do it year after year, and have a really fun and special time with the visitors and get to know people also involved so it becomes more of a group effort.

It’s such a great experience for the families because you’re bringing the world into your own home.

TR: What are some of your short-term and long-term goals for the organization?

AS: We just got a grant that will help us do a freshening up of our branding. We don’t really have a logo and we don’t really have any good promotional materials to help recruit students or to explain the program to the community, so we’re going to be spending some time this year working on that. And in addition, some of that money will go toward need-based scholarships for travelers so we can offer some financial assistance for travelers for the next three years.

We really want to build back up that kind of word-of-mouth year over year experiences that the students have and if a group of students goes one year and then they talk about it, we can build back up a more reliable group of students who are open to this opportunity and to all income levels because we don’t want it to be an exclusive thing.

TR: Where do you hope to see the organization in five years?

AS: I would really love to see a much stronger community of people, who have met through this experience, meeting every year, maybe helping out and maybe talking about their experience to upcoming students who might be interested.

And I would love to see more integration into the schools of the overall partnership and maybe more clubs in more schools and maybe some Japanese language, and just taking advantage of the fact that we have this wonderful relationship right here in our own town that goes so far back.